Aupōuri water consents: Far North avocado boom sparks water worries

Mapua Orchard general manager Ian Broadhurst among 3- and 4-year-old avocado trees. Photo / Peter de Graaf

The Far North's green gold — the avocado — is transforming landscapes and lives in an area where jobs have long been scarce. But the boom is putting pressure on a precious aquifer, the only reliable source of water on the Aupōuri Peninsula. Next week experts will weigh up whether to allow growers to extract another 6 million cubic metres of water a year. Reporter Peter de Graaf examines a divisive issue from several angles.

The head of a major avocado growing operation in the Far North says he wants the same thing as people who oppose increased water take from the Aupōuri aquifer — a long-term, sustainable water supply.

Mapua Orchard is one of 24 businesses, iwi and individuals in the latest round of water use consent applications in the booming horticulture area north of Kaitaia.

The applicants, collectively known as the Aupōuri Aquifer Water Users Group, want to draw up to 6.2 million cu m a year from an aquifer which stretches roughly from Ahipara in the south to Ngataki in the north.

Their requests, along with views of local residents, will be heard over three days next week in Kaitaia by independent commissioners appointed by the Northland Regional Council.

An earlier round of consents, granted with strict conditions by the Environment Court in 2018, allowed 17 users to draw about 2 million cu m a year.

Aerial view of newly planted avocado orchards south of Houhora Harbour. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Mapua's application for up to 580,000cu m a year isn't the biggest in this round — it's dwarfed by Te Aupōuri and Te Rarawa iwi — but as the biggest private investor with a series of highly visible orchards along State Highway 1 it has copped most of the flak.

General manager Ian Broadhurst said there was ''no them and us''.

''We want the same result as the people who oppose the consents — a long-term, sustainable resource. The last thing we want is to run out of water,'' he said.

''We absolutely understand their concerns. Water is key to us and we've put a huge effort into managing and measuring it.''

Chief among those concerns is whether increased pumping from the aquifer will lead to salt water incursion from the sea, making bore water unusable.

Anyone sitting in on next week's hearings can expect to be bombarded with hundreds of pages of evidence as to why that is, or is not, a risk.

With few rivers and low summer rainfall, most residents on the Aupōuri Peninsula rely on bores for their water.

Newly planted avocado orchards near Waiharara, north of Kaitaia. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Broadhurst said the volume of water the company was applying for was based on council guidelines and more than it expected to use.

''We don't want to pump water. It's expensive and over-watering is detrimental to avocado trees, so we'll do everything we can to minimise it.''

Measures to reduce water use included weed mat to reduce evaporation and investing heavily in moisture management technology to make sure trees got only as much water as they needed.

The company is developing three orchards between Pukenui and Waiharara — Mapua (205ha), Tiri (155ha) and Largus (55ha) — and is owned by Auckland's Murray Forlong, who made his money building computer-controlled plasma cutting machines.

Broadhurst said four people were employed when the land was used for dairy and beef farming.

Now the same 400ha provided work for 50 permanent staff plus 12 beekeepers for pollination. In picking season those numbers would increase by at least 100.

''So the social effects are massive. Now these people have purpose and jobs. It's far reaching.''

In the past backpackers had often been used for picking but Broadhurst said that wasn't sustainable, especially in the Covid era.

Instead, the company was working with Hort NZ, Te Rarawa and others to build up a pool of local labour who could be deployed to pick avocados or mandarins or work in forestry, depending on what was required at the time of year.

That could mean year-round work for pickers and would save Mapua having to train a new crop of backpackers ever year.

Mapua Orchard general manager Ian Broadhurst checks the fruit on 4-year-old avocado trees. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Broadhurst said, as well as boosting employment, the company spent as much as it could locally, including by hiring Kaitaia earthworks contractors and buying supplies of trees, tractors and timber around Northland.

The exact amount spent so far is not known but Mapua's ballpark figure for turning 1ha of farmland into avocado orchard is $100,000, making a total of $40m.

Broadhurst said he expected any new water consents would be staged like the last batch in 2018, which are being phased in over a four-year period.

Mapua's current application was for Tiri Orchard, a former dairy farm that had an existing consent to take water from a stream.

That would tide the orchard over in the meantime but was not a long-term option.

Ultimately the answer lay in capturing the area's winter rainfall and storing it for summer when the trees were flowering and most in need of water.

''Everyone agrees we can't keep pulling it out of the aquifer. There's no shortage of water, we just need the infrastructure to capture it.''

Despite challenges around water and wind, the Far North was the best avocado growing area in the country.

In the Bay of Plenty and, to a lesser extent, Whangārei, avocado trees produced a smaller crop every second year. That was not the case in the Far North.

Another factor in the Far North boom was the loss of horticultural land to urban sprawl in places like Pukekohe.

In the current round of water applications Te Aupōuri's commercial arm is requesting up to 1.17 million cu m a year and Te Rarawa 776,000cu m.